For anyone interested in Reid's moral psychology and ethics, the
new edition of his Essays on the Active Powers of Man
is a welcome addition to the Edinburgh Collection. This book, first
announced as the sixth, finally arrives as the seventh of a ten
volume collection, The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid, edited by
Knud Haakonssen, which contains Reid's published and unpublished
writings. During his lifetime, Reid published three volumes:
An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common
Sense (1764), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of
Man (1785), and Essays on the Active Powers of
Man (1788). With the most recent addition of Harris and
Haakonssen's edition of the Active Powers, all three
of these books are now available in a clear and well-documented
critical edition. This new volume in the Edinburgh Edition has
already become the standard critical edition of Reid's Active
Powers.

The editors begin this volume with an instructive account of the
historical background of Reid's ideas, the genesis of his work, a
brief description of his method of argumentation, and comments
about the reception of the Active Powers. The
introduction is followed by the critical text of Reid's
Active Powers, in which Reid presents his account of
human moral agency, and the volume ends with a bibliography and a
useful index of names.

In the introduction, the editors argue that this collection of
essays has its roots in Reid's earlier intellectual life, with
themes that Reid first started to develop in the 1730s, when he was
regent at King's College in Aberdeen. However, Harris and
Haakonssen point out, the greatest number of notes and manuscripts
on the subjects found in these essays date from the time when Reid
held a professorship for moral philosophy at the University of
Glasgow (which started in 1764). Haakonssen and Harris report that
among the courses Reid taught in Glasgow, one stands out as lasting
the longest and including the greatest number of lectures:
pneumatology (philosophy of mind). Reid found this topic to be so
important because he believed it was basic to ethics and politics.
The lectures for this course, in which he develops his moral
psychology, constitute a significant part of the Active
Powers. During his years at the University of Glasgow, Reid
also presented a series of discourses at the Glasgow Literary
Society. Some of the arguments discussed in these papers became
central to the important Essay III of the Active
Powers.

According to Haakonssen and Harris, two factors seem to have had
a major influence on the development of the arguments and views
Reid presents in the Active Powers. The first is
Reid's criticism of David Hume's moral theory, sentimentalism,
together with a rebuttal of Joseph Priestly's necessitarianism,
both viewed, according to the editors' understanding of Reid, as
resurrections of the ancient Epicurean philosophy. Against this
background, Reid develops his own views about the nature of
non-rational and rational principles of action (or motives) and
about the liberty of moral agents. The second factor is an essay
competition for which Reid appears to have prepared several sets of
manuscripts. Although these manuscripts bear the name of the
competition, Haakonssen and Harris find no evidence that Reid
actually submitted an essay to the contest. Even so, parts of Essay
IV of the Active Powers—especially the three arguments
in defence of moral liberty—reflect the content of these
manuscripts. The introduction ends with instructive information
about the first publication and reception of the Active
Powers, which was among the dozen most frequently acquired
works of Scottish Enlightenment Philosophy, and which appeared in
twenty-one library subscriptions in the early nineteenth
century.

In the critical text, which follows the introduction, Reid
presents his account of the human mind as it is involved in free
moral action. Reid had presented his views about the intellectual
powers of the human mind (perception, belief, memory,
consciousness, etc.) in his earlier Essays on the
Intellectual Powers. His aim in the five essays of the
Active Powers is to offer an account of moral agency.
Man alone (by which Reid refers to human beings, as opposed to
brute...

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